Surveillance cultures, chains and holes in street level networking: dealing with drug users in Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Porto Alegre (Brazil)

Abstract

If surveillance is understood as a complex multi-dimensional process, then collaboration between health, social and law enforcement sectors can be viewed as a part of the surveillance culture of particular societies and urban settings. Policies towards illicit drugs usually build on a two-track approach—public health and public order—with different objectives that have to be negotiated daily by street level workers in the light of their differing beliefs on drug use. This paper brings examples of collaboration and non-collaboration among workers from social, health and law enforcement agencies in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Porto Alegre, Brazil in their daily interactions with drug users, to analyze the types of surveillance arising from these negotiations. The study utilizes results from 80 in-depth interviews with street level workers and 800 hours of participant observation carried out from February 2010 until March 2011, equally divided between the two cities. Different cultures of surveillance produce diverse state-citizen approaches in terms of coercion, care, and rights. In Amsterdam, close collaboration and information exchange among workers produce a ‘chain’ surveillance culture: an intensive screening allows drug users to have more access to care, yet, at the same time this can produce excessive control over users’ lives. In Porto Alegre, by contrast, insufficient collaboration produces a surveillance culture of ‘holes’: less systematic screening and lack of information sharing allows users to slip out of care, and of workers’ surveillance sight. Historically, though coming from apparently opposite extremes in terms of drug surveillance (respectively permissive and controlling), both Amsterdam and Porto Alegre in practice show surveillance cultures which combine care and order. Combinations, however, vary according to different assemblages between actors concerned with transforming drug users’ lives.

Disrupting and Maintaining Prohibition: Institutional and Grassroots Harm Reduction Practices in Ottawa

“…However, it is not merely space that produces and directs law, but also time (Braverman et al 2014). Mariana Valverde's (2014, 2015 use of Mikhail Bahktin's (1981) concept of the chronotope may be a means for explicitly including time and temporality in my legal geography framework. Valverde (2015) utilizes the chronotope as a tool for understanding legal relations and processes.…”

“…The production of drugs and people who use them as a problem through surveillance justifies further surveillance, and an array of approaches to address this problem, including law enforcement and harm reduction. For example, Rafaela Rigoni (2015) maps the connections between the surveillance practices of health and social workers engaged in harm reduction, and police officers. In the surveillance methods Rigoni (2015) documents, information about people who use drugs is shared between workers and across police and harm reduction agencies.…”

“…For example, Rafaela Rigoni (2015) maps the connections between the surveillance practices of health and social workers engaged in harm reduction, and police officers. In the surveillance methods Rigoni (2015) documents, information about people who use drugs is shared between workers and across police and harm reduction agencies. Through surveillance, Rigoni (2015, 498) demonstrates that police and harm reduction workers collaborate and justify their work through surveillance.…”

“…Some law enforcement practices also aimed at improving users' health and wellbeing, by referring users to caring services rather than arresting them. Rigoni's (2015) insights provide a first look into how surveillance is a useful tool for understanding the overlaps and interconnections between prohibition and various harm reduction responses.…”